Description
The proposed paper identifies the paradox that Germany’s increased geopolitical ambition has not led to reformulating its military procurement policy successfully to live up to this. The Bundeswehr’s equipment situation is lagging behind the politically formulated aim of increased German participation in the transatlantic and European security architecture. Thus, the question how Germany has made procurement policy choices over the past decade concerns greater questions of international order and stability. Consequently, the proposed paper’s central question asks why this gap between political ambition and procurement policy existed throughout the 2010s. The aim of answering this question is to gain a better understanding of German policymaking and therefore Germany’s national political limitations when addressing contemporary challenges to the international security architecture. The proposed paper situates this question in theories on military innovation, strategic culture, and bureaucratic behaviour. This leads to a focus on stakeholders’ relationships in the military policy arena. The paper develops a research approach to qualify how stakeholders’ relationships influence policy reform. The paper approaches these questions through a thematic analysis of elite interviews with stakeholders in Germany’s procurement policy that are triangulated with other sources to aggregate their mutual relationships’ impact on policymaking.
